Re: Sagas and Literature

From: Jeff Richard <richaje_at_...>
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:02:33 -0000

> Most of it's going to be oral peasant stories, or hagiographies and
holy
> books, yes. But I don't see why at least some Western societies
couldn't
> have something like Mallory - full of allegory and all that, but
> literature none the less. Or even, at a stretch, Chaucer. It won't
be a
> big tradition (due, as you say, to the limited audience), but it
seems
> possible, especially in Loskalm, where they'd be quite into romantic
> fiction, I should think.

I think that's right. Probably the most widely read bits of literature will be scriptures and hagiographies (the Abiding Book may well be the most widely disseminated bit of literature in Glorantha). However, I can certainly see the Loskalmi having romances like Malory (or more likely like Chretian de Troyes and Guillaume de Lorris).

Inside the Lunar Empire, I suspect there is a wide range of literatures - holy texts, philosophical works, poetry, histories and devotional works - with a wide range of styles and influences. I think that the last century might well be a Lunar "Golden Age" like that of Classical Islam - so who are the Lunar versions of Avicenna and Averroes?

Jeff